Swiss work less than ten years ago

Annual Swiss working hours have dropped by the equivalent of nearly 14 days over the past decade. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

Hours worked in Switzerland dropped by 3.4% in 2020 due to the impact of Covid-19. This was a particularly sharp fall, but average working hours have been decreasing steadily over the past ten years, according to the Federal Statistical Office (FSO).

In 2020, an employed person worked an average of 1,495 hours, which is 7.2% less than ten years ago, the FSO said on Thursday. This represents nearly 14 fewer days of full-time work than in 2010.

The impact of the Covid crisis on the labour market was considerable, noted the FSO. Hours worked dropped 3.4% between 2019 and 2020, mainly due to short-time working and restrictions on self-employed people. The hotel and restaurant sector experienced the biggest drop: 22.2%.

Between 2010 and 2019, annual working time per employed person fell by 3.9%, or 7.4 working days, says the FSO. This was due to more part-time work and holidays, an increase in certain types of absence and a drop in overtime, it explained. Over the last ten years, the number of weeks of contractual holiday for full-time employees has increased from 5.0 to 5.2 weeks per year.

More pressure?

“On the whole, we should all be happy to work less and spend more time with our families. But I have the impression that these figures do not tell the whole story,” Beatriz Rosende of the public service trade union told Swiss broadcaster RTS. “At the same time, there is an intensification of work. This means that we are working faster and that we have to be more productive at work than we were ten years ago. Many workers decide to reduce their activity rate because full-time work has become unbearable.”